This one is always remembered as "the time the Saw guy tried to make a scary doll movie." And I suppose that is kind of accurate. It is from James Wan, and it does have a scary ventriloquist dummy. But it would appeal more to people who are fans of simple ghost stories, rather than people who are fans of haunted dolls (are there those people?). Ultimately, it is much more of a ghost story along the lines of Wan's Insidious rather than a killer doll movie like Devil Doll or Magic. No dolls yelling or chasing people around here - maybe just moving their eyes and turning their heads.
I remember hearing that Wan just wanted to make an atmospheric ghost story, but then the studio pressured him into making it a bit more violent and visually shocking, so they could get an R-rating and say "from the director of Saw." So in that respect, I think Dead Silence is really kind of a test run for Wan's more successful future films like Insidious and The Conjuring. It's almost like he's learning how to build tension here - Saw showed he knew how to direct a film, but the tension there was more out of the threat of violence rather than the threat of the unknown. Some of the scare scenes here are extremely effective, but just about everything else didn't really work for me.
Dead Silence starts off with young married couple Jamie (Ryan Kwanten) and Lisa (Laura Reagan) going through their daily routine in their movie-huge apartment, being all jokey with each other and very much in love. A mysterious package shows up at their door, and when they crack it open they find a ventriloquist dummy - since you've seen the poster and the creepy doll-centric opening credits, you know something is up. They just think it's a bit odd and continue to joke about it. Jamie goes to grab dinner, and we are treated to our first scare-scene as Lisa is attacked and killed by a ghost. The doll just moves his eyes...
Detective Lipton (Donnie Wahlburg) is convinced Jamie is the killer, but doesn't have the evidence to hold him. Jamie feels like the dummy has to be a clue to what happened, and finds the name of his hometown - Ravens Fair (again with the vague grammatical stuff - `a la Vampires Night Orgy!) - hidden on the box. He heads home ("it's been a long time") and has to confront the local legend of Mary Shaw, an olde-timey ventriloquist/potential-kidnapper/victim of a posse out for justice/ghost.
What I liked
There is a lot to like in the handful of scenes where we are waiting for a ghostly attack. True to it's name, Dead Silence builds tension by dropping every sound. The soundtrack, background noises - even just general ambient noise stops, so we know something bad is about to go down. It's an effective method (and one I've seen Wan use to great effect in later films) - here it's way more about the anticipation than the actual scare.
The use of lighting in the scare scenes is quality too. Every scene where something supernatural happens is drenched in shadows or flashing lights, and the movements of the doll/ghost/whatever are hidden between the strobes. There are also some neat little stylistic flourishes here and there, mostly in transitions from scene to scene. For instance, before our hero sets out to travel to a distant location, we zoom in on a map on the wall, which slowly turns lifelike until we realize it's the real location and we see him driving in it.
What I didn't like
Generally speaking, outside of the scare-scenes, it's just a pretty boring movie. The story is pretty by the numbers (until an unearned and needlessly gory *twist*), and the things that do make it unique are kind of stupid. For instance, Mary Shaw was buried with her dolls? A hundred of them? After the town basically murdered her for being a kidnapper? Seems like a bit of a nice thing to do for someone you just murdered. It's an interesting/creepy idea but they keep going back to it - something like that falls apart if you pay too much attention to it.
And the he acting is bad enough to be noticeable. I was not taken by our lead Kwanten in the least. He lost me when he didn't seem all that distraught by his wife's death, and it was all downhill from there. He looks good, but couldn't sell horror, at least at that stage of his career. Actually, I can see from imdb that many of the actors here have had successful TV careers - and really, that's kind of what Dead Silence kind of feels like when it strays from the haunting stuff - something that wouldn't seem out of place on the WB. Although I did appreciate that they didn't try to shoehorn in any kind of romantic angle after his wife's death.
The script is pretty weak too. The characters are one-note - I was particularly annoyed by Wahlberg's Detective Lipton, who was constantly shaving with an electric razor. It's almost like they said "we need a kind of quirky trait for this guy" and maybe they were shaving at the time. "Sure, that's good enough!" The script is credited to Leigh Whannell (a co-creator of the Saw franchise with Wan), although has distanced himself from this flick. He actually wrote a blog entry called Dud Silence - ha! - complaining about studio interference and the difficulty of working in the studio system. He takes some of the blame, but it seems like it was a trying time for him to say the least. A good read! I was happy to learn that the shaving bit was not his.
Ultimately
Outside of the ghostly stuff, there isn't anything here to recommend. I honestly don't think the characters/story add anything to the scare scenes, which in and of themselves are really well done. If there is some sort of fan cut of just the scary stuff, that would be worth 15 minutes of your time. Otherwise...
I would not recommend this film.
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